The Great American History Blog

Elizabeth Van Lew The White House of the Confederacy Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond, although from a good family, was an ardent U...

Fort Sumter fell on April 14, and on April 17 Virginia adopted an “Ordinance of Secession” in the form of a repeal of Virginia’s rati...

No single individual did more to create the Hollywood cult of celebrity than theatrical genius Sid Grauman.   As a youth, Grauman work...

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War By Tony Horowitz A well written and informative book, but ...

Link to: Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America Following Biblical teachings, a sexual act that involved two human beings “of ...

The United States experienced 645 mass murder events (killings with at least four victims) in the period 1976-2010, or approximately twenty...

Link to: How Martha Washington Lived Have you ever fallen madly in love with a pair of shoes? Luxury footwear, combining the art for...

As fighting surged across Northern Virginia during the four years of the American Civil War, many curious reminders were left behin...

America Salutes a Very Great Lady (The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee) Words to Inspire Now and Forever  God Save the Queen! ...

Most of the treasures hidden by the pirate Jean Lafitte are in Louisiana, although Florida and Texas claim their share as well. -...

In February 1732, thirty six year old Ambrose Madison, the grandfather of future U.S. President James Madison, brought his wife, Frances...

The tomb of the Unknown Confederate Soldier is located at the Beauvoir Confederate Cemetery located on the grounds of Beauvoir House...

The 1933 film King Kong (remade in 1976 and 2005 ) tells the story of a giant pre-historic creature which rules over a lost island (Skull...

Lincoln 1860 Campaign Button As a politician, Lincoln used humor with devastating effect. Lincoln got a tremendous laugh from t...

We get an inkling of Lincoln ’s sometimes savage wit in his description of his early love life.   In autumn 1836, Abraham Lincoln, then a ...

Originally designed as a protection against syphilis, the condom began to come into use as a contraceptive in the eighteenth century. Cond...

The first permanent English colony in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia on May 14, 1607 by the Virginia Company of Londo...

Although some Irish Catholics had lived in America since the colonial period, there was no significant immigration to the United States unt...

In 1856, the town fathers of a newly founded small town in southwest Indiana petitioned the United States Postal Service to open a po...

In the late 1920s, Henry Ford set up an American-style town called Fordlandia eighty miles south of the Brazilian city of Santarem. F...